Targeting the appropriate people with the right message at the right time is important for the success of any digital marketing strategy.
There are various channels of outreach, each with its own significance in your overall strategy. For a consistent relationship with your prospects and clients, you need a strong digital presence and an effective email marketing strategy.
The digital landscape is ever-changing, but one thing remains constant: data-driven campaigns are the most successful. You need accurate data on your audience and their behaviours to provide relevant content and at the appropriate time.
To improve engagement, open rates and click-through rates.
First and foremost, who are your target demographics?
Expert opinions and research are both valuable; as said earlier the best strategies are data driven. But knowing what works for your audience – or for specific subsets of your audience – is also crucial. In order not to compromise the integrity of your campaign or impact your open rates, understanding your audience is important.
This is a good time to create a persona for your target consumer.
Let’s talk about demographics for a moment. Many elements influence a person’s purchasing decisions, and a successful company fully understands its ideal consumer. Segmenting your customers is a good method to get a better understanding of who they are. Your customer’s location, age, gender, occupation, and interests are all factors to consider.
Understanding and segmenting your target demographic allows you to create a closer relationship with your customer and tailor your message more accordingly.
Because one size does not fit all, of course. People’s email opening and reading habits are changing dramatically.
Who are you sending an email to?
Are they active leads, inactive leads, or loyal customers?
Is this a business-to-business (B2B) message or are you trying to reach out to final consumers?
What region and time zone do they belong to?
After you’ve finished segmenting, it’s time to think about personalization, timing and frequency. The ‘who’ question influences the ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how frequent’
The Right Message
The next step is to tailor your content and messaging for each part after you’ve segmented your list. In order to construct your messaging, you’ll need to know where they are in the customer journey. That’s the only way to win in the moments that matter.
Assume a repeat customer wishes to become a member of your community. By including their name in the subject line, you might make them feel more appreciated. Not only is it more personal and welcoming, but studies show that emails with unique subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.
Your email objectives should be quantified. This is where you decide whether you want to invite,engage, give discounts, promote clicks, or close a sale. This will allow you to take advantage of your newly segmented list and work toward your ultimate objectives. You need to consider why you are sending them an email and what value you have to deliver.
Put yourself in the shoes of each of your segmented audience and consider questions like:
Who will be interested in the content you’re delivering?
Would this information be more effective for customer retention or upselling if it were delivered to a prospective customer?
Based on their buying history, and recent email engagement, who should be excluded from your message?
Timing and Frequency
Now that you know your audience and the kind of value you want to deliver to them, what time will they receive your email most delightfully? A message sent on Monday will yield a different response from the one sent on Saturday. For B2B emails, weekdays are preferable while for Business to customers (B2C), weekends are not necessarily a bad option. Asides ascertaining the day of the week to send the email, time zones should also be considered for different geographic locations.
Research by LinkedIn showed that the worst day to send emails is Monday, whether it’s a single message or an email newsletter. When people’s inboxes are at their most crowded, they’re looking to empty them out.
According to the same research, the optimal time to send marketing emails is in the middle of the week. Emails sent in the middle of the week have a greater open rate, especially if they’re sent during business hours.
Stay clear of their mornings. Avoid sending messages in the early hours of the day, between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. If you send your email blasts around lunchtime (for example, noon – 1:00 p.m.), you’ll see a lot more open rates.
Keep in mind that your audience’s tastes are likely to vary over time. This year, sending an email at noon on Saturday may be the best option, but next year may be different. Test the timing of your communications on a regular basis and keep an eye on the open trends. You’ll always send your messages at the optimum time this way.
Avoid sending out too many email blasts as a general rule. When you send out emails to your audience too regularly, you run the danger of appearing spammy.
Even for drip campaigns or cart abandonment emails, you should space out your mails in an ideal manner and not be all up in their faces.
A/B Testing
It’s also important to note that there is no such thing as the ideal moment to send an email. Sure, there are best practices to follow that differ per business, but standards can shift.
Maintain a flexible attitude when it comes to email timing. A/B testing should be done to ascertain when is best for your audience.
A/B testing requires breaking your email list into two portions. Then, at different times, send your marketing emails to each portion to observe which ones get the best reaction.
However, this method is not limited to just determining the optimum moment to send an email. It can also be used to test subject lines and body copy.
It is important to send the right message at the right time. You have a better chance of converting leads into customers because you are ending the most contextual message that will help you connect and sustain a relationship with them.
